'Rooted above': Brahman is called above (ūrdhva) by reason of time, because of its subtlety, its being the cause, its eternality and its greatness; it is the unmanifest, possessed of the power of māyā, and this tree of transmigration has that for its root, so it is rooted above. So too the scripture, 'rooted above and branched below is this eternal aśvattha' (Kaṭha 2.6.1). And in the Purāṇa: 'arising from the unmanifest as its root, raised up by His grace, having the intellect for its trunk, the openings of the senses for its hollows, the great elements for its spreading boughs, the objects for its leaves, merit and demerit for its fair flowers, the arising of pleasure and pain for its fruits; the eternal Brahman-tree, the support of the livelihood of all beings; this is the Brahman-grove, and Brahman ever moves about in it; having cut and split this with the supreme sword of knowledge, and having then gained delight in the Self, one does not return from there again' and the like. That tree of transmigration, rooted above, made of māyā, is branched below: the great principle, the ego-sense, the subtle elements and the rest are as if its branches below. It will not stand even till tomorrow, so it is the aśvattha; they call this momentarily-perishing aśvattha imperishable, because the māyā of transmigration has been at work from beginningless time, this tree of transmigration being the well-known resort of the beginningless and endless succession of bodies and the rest. And here is another qualification of that tree: the metres, the chant-coverings marked as the Ṛk, Yajus and Sāman, are as its leaves; as the leaves of a tree serve to guard it, so the Vedas serve to guard the tree of transmigration, since they make plain merit and demerit and their causes and fruits. He who knows the tree of transmigration as explained, with its root, is a knower of the Veda, a knower of the meaning of the Veda; for, apart from this tree of transmigration with its root, there is not even an atom's worth of a thing to be known left over, and so the knowledge of the tree of transmigration with its root is praised, in that its knower is all-knowing, a knower of the meaning of all the Veda. Another conceiving of the parts of that tree of transmigration is now told.

The Blessed Lord spoke. That undecaying ashvattha tree, called transmigration, with its root above and its branches below, of which the revealed texts speak, 'this ancient ashvattha, with its root above and its branches below', 'whoever knows the tree with its root above and its branches below at this very moment', and the rest. Its being rooted above is by reason of the four-faced one, who is set above the seven worlds; its being branched below is by reason of its reaching down through all men, beasts, animals, birds, worms, insects, moths, and unmoving things that dwell on the earth; and its undecayingness is its uncuttability, by way of its flowing on, until the rise of the right knowledge that is the cause of non-attachment. The metres, the revealed texts, are said to be the leaves of that ashvattha. By the desire-prompted rites set forth by such revealed texts as 'one who desires prosperity should sacrifice a white animal to the wind', 'one who desires offspring should offer to Indra and Agni an oblation on eleven potsherds', this transmigration-tree grows; so the metres themselves are its leaves, for a tree grows by its leaves. He who knows the ashvattha of such a kind is a knower of the Veda; for the Veda tells the means of cutting the transmigration-tree, and the knowledge of the own-form of the tree to be cut serves the knowledge of the means of cutting, so he is called a knower of the Veda. Of that tree whose branch is man and the rest, other branches too, made by this and that karma, spread downward again in the forms of man, beast, and the rest, and spread upward in the forms of gandharva, yaksha, god, and the rest. And those branches are grown strong by the qualities, grown strong by the qualities sattva and the rest; their shoots are the objects, the tender shoots being the objects sound and the rest. How? To this the Lord speaks.

Salutation to the cutter of transmigration. In this chapter Krishna shows the knowledge of the own-form of transmigration, of the means to cross beyond it, and the rest. The scripture says, 'Vishnu is on high', and 'I am the up-purifying one, the wealth of the swift, the immortal; I am wealth full of splendour' (Taittiriya Upanishad 1.10). 'On high' (urdhva) means He who is highest of all; 'below' is the lowly; the 'branches' are the beings. It is the 'ashvattha' because it does not stand even till the morrow (shvas) in one constant manner; yet there is no perishing of it as a stream. As things stood in the time of the earlier Brahma, so they stand everywhere, and that is its 'imperishability'. The Vedic chants (chandas) are its 'leaves' because they are the cause of fruit, for fruit never arises while the leaf is unborn.